Thursday, March 03, 2016

Picturing a scary future

The United States has sent a steady stream of warships into the area
claiming its right to navigate on the high seas. In December 2015, the
US claimed
that China’s militarism in the area had eroded navigational safety in
the South China Sea. In its rejoinder, China warned the US not to be “provocative.”
Last month, the US began air and sea “patrols” in the South China Sea
sending one of its warships within twelve nautical miles of one of
China’s reclaimed islands. This month, the war of words escalated to
limited kinetic action as flares
were fired by a refueling US KC-130 Hercules while on air patrol. The
US insists that it will continue its military patrols over the South
China Sea as is consistent with international law.

The bottom line is that US actions indicate that the US gives not one
whit about international law. It breaks international law everyday that
it tortures, kills, bombs and maims the innocent. It threatens with
asymmetric warfare any country that dares to challenge its ability to
impose a neoliberal agenda on foreign citizens.

Think about the above under a President Hillary Clinton and you'll realize why her wins on Super Tuesday are so frightening.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, the UN releases
their figures for February's deaths and injured in Iraq, Haider al-Abadi
faces calls for him to resign as prime minister, Turkey bombs Iraq's
religious shrines, War Hawk Hillary Clinton wins seven state primaries,
and much more.

It's not what you thought When you first began itYou got what you want You can hardly stand it thoughBy now you knowIt's not going to stopIt's not going to stop It's not going to stopTill you wise up
-- "Wise Up," written by Aimee Mann, first appears on the soundtrack to JERRY MAGUIRE

The one some of us (including me) could give some leeway in 2008 because
of her Iraq War vote, we could argue it wasn't necessarily who she was.
Then she spent four years as Secretary of State advocating for every
war she could think of.

She is a War Hawk. A War Monger.

Not only has she made that ever clearer, there's also that Iraq War vote.

And her ever changing story there.

A 'mistake' has morphed into she wasn't wrong to have voted for it, she was wrong to have trusted Bully Boy Bush.

So she was an idiot when she believed Bill Clinton wouldn't repeatedly
cheat on her and she remained an idiot who bought any line a man gave
her with regards to Bully Boy Bush.

Let's all grasp that Bully Boy Bush was called a "chimp" and far worse.

That he was considered one of the stupidest people in the world when he occupied the White House.

And Hillary's ever changing defense for voting in favor of the Iraq War is that the moron tricked her.

How stupid do you have to be in order to be tricked by Bully Boy Bush?

The people who take me to task -- it is the same old
thing. "But don’t you want a woman?"

But most of the people who say that are not aware of her record.
It is strange to see somebody who says they are against fracking, and
then you tell them, "Well, you know [Hillary Clinton] has been selling
fracking," and they have chosen not to recognize that.

And some don't recognize that because they don't want to and some don't recognize it because of the echo chamber we live in.

Whores and trash like David Brock (he is both) pounce on any Iraq
statement by a Republican but run interference for Hillary. They pimp
and promote outrage about the Iraq War . . . only when they can use the
Iraq War to attack Republicans.

They never cared about Iraq.

They have no ethics.

They will sell out anyone and everyone.

If Brock's Republican gal pals hadn't turned on him, he would have stayed a Republican.

But the party boy who had no one to dish with came running to the Democratic side when he was feeling lonely.

As always, the idiot Naomi Wolf figures in.

David Brock smeared Anita Hill with one lie after another.

She was the victim of sexual harassment.

And she came forward when her attacker, Clarence Thomas, was nominated for a position on the Supreme Court.

David Brock -- a whore even then, trash even then -- attacked her with one lie after another.

And then he decided he'd move to the left and there was Naomi Wolf, having drinks with him and vouching for him.

And then others rushed to wade into the cesspool and cozy up to him.

No.

He never showed he learned a damn thing.

From the start, he did -- from the faux left -- exactly what he had done on the right wing.

All he did was infect the political discourse.

And further degrade a political party which had begun selling out the people several decades ago.

The David Brocks spread their lies and social diseases far and wide.

You see it in nonsense like "Hillary has an answer now to her 2002 vote for the war!"

No, she didn't.

Saying the 2002 vote is not a plan to deal with the Islamic State?

Who the hell ever said it was?

More to the point, Hillary has no plan to deal with the Islamic State.

She's cribbing from Barack for three idiotic points that no one who is
serious about defeating the Islamic State would ever pretend addresses
the issue.

But we lie and we kid.

And every now and then some American loud mouth (there's a lot of us in
this country) will pretend to care about Iraq but then will usually
justify Hillary or some other Democrat who has supported the Iraq War.

How is that any different from any day since the 2008 US presidential election?

And let's stop pretending that we have a segment of the media that's an
"independent media." THE NATION elected to obsess over the firing of
Melissa Harris Lacewell Perry and what a travesty that was (as Trina mockingly put it, "Not since CBS axed Joan of Arcadia has there been such a tragedy").
The reality, Melissa attacked NSA whistle-blower Ed Snowden, refused
to cover -- in her blather chat -- Iraq. She was useless, worse than
that. But THE NATION obsessed over her.

Hillary Clinton has spent much of her presidential campaignrunning away from her responsibility
for the United States’ disastrous 2011 intervention in Libya. The
February 19 release of more emails from her private server may make it
harder for her to do so.In an email
with the subject “bravo!” sent on March 19, 2011—the day the United
States and its allies began bombing Libya—Clinton confidant and former
employee Anne-Marie Slaughter appears to praise then-Secretary of State
Clinton for convincing a reluctant President Obama to take military
action in Libya.

“I cannot imagine how exhausted you must be after this week, but I
have NEVER been prouder of having worked for you,” writes Slaughter, who
worked as an advisor to Clinton in the State Department from 2009 to
February 3, 2011, and then remained a consultant to the policy planning
bureau. “Turning POTUS around on this is a major win for everything we
have worked for.” An earlier email release, which I reported on
previously, showed that Slaughter had spent February 2011 imploring Clinton to involve the United States militarily in Libya, insisting that it would “change the image of the United States overnight.”

Again, there is no longer any pretense that her Iraq War vote was an isolated issue or a one time position.

She is a War Hawk.

It is her natural, default position.

And she has no answer for the crises in Iraq.

Today, the US Defense Dept announced/bragged/insisted/claimed:

Strikes in IraqAttack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 15
strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:-- Near Fallujah, four strikes struck two separate ISIL
tactical units and destroyed an ISIL anti-air artillery piece, an ISIL
building, an ISIL bunker, an ISIL vehicle and an ISIL staging area and
denied ISIL access to terrain.-- Near Habbaniyah, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.-- Near Mosul, two strikes destroyed an ISIL vehicle and an ISIL fighting position and damaged a separate ISIL vehicle.-- Near Ramadi, three strikes destroyed an ISIL tactical vehicle, two ISIL tunnel systems and two ISIL vehicle bombs.-- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position and suppressed an ISIL mortar position.-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position and suppressed an ISIL mortar position.-- Near Tal Afar, a strike suppressed an ISIL mortar position.-- Near Tikrit, two strikes destroyed an ISIL vehicle and two ISIL mortar positions.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target.

This is Barack Obama's kick the can 'strategy.' His plan to just keep
it all going and let the next president sort it out (or continue the
Iraq War as Barack has).

Hillary has no answers.

UNAMI issued their (under)count of the dead and wounded for February today:

Baghdad, 01 March 2016 – A total of 670 Iraqis were killed and
another 1,290 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed
conflict in Iraq in February 2016*, according to casualty figures
verified by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

The number of civilians killed in February was 410 (including 11
federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details,
facilities protection police, fire department), and the number of
civilians injured was 1,050 (including 34 federal police, Sahwa civil
defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police, fire
department).A total of 260 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (including
Peshmerga, SWAT and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi Army but
excluding Anbar Operations) were killed and 240 were injured.Although the overall casualty figures were a drop from the 849 killed
and 1,450 injured in January which UNAMI was able to verify, the month
of February was marked by the viciousness of some of the attacks, which
included suicide bombers against places of worship, a market and a
funeral.The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General
(SRSG) for Iraq, Mr. Ján Kubiš, lamented the continuing loss of life and
the injuries as a result of the violence in Iraq.“This conflict continues to exact a heavy toll on the population.
Civilians account for about two-thirds of the overall death toll and for
most of the injuries in February. This is deeply worrying and
disheartening. Civilians should not pay the price in this conflict,” he
added.The figures showed that Baghdad Governorate was the worst affected,
with 1,115 civilian casualties (277 killed, 838 injured), Diyala 40
killed and 43 injured, Ninewa 42 killed and 5 injured, while Kirkuk had
29 killed and 28 injured, Salahadin 11 killed and 6 injured, and Babil 5
killed and 4 injured.According to information obtained by UNAMI from the Health
Directorate in Anbar, in February 2016 the Governorate suffered a total
of 130 civilian casualties (04 killed and 126 injured).*CAVEATS: In general, UNAMI has been hindered in effectively
verifying casualties in conflict areas. Figures for casualties from
Anbar Governorate are provided by the Health Directorate. Casualty
figures obtained from the Anbar Health Directorate might not fully
reflect the real number of casualties in those areas due to the
increased volatility of the situation on the ground and the disruption
of services. In some cases, UNAMI could only partially verify certain
incidents. UNAMI has also received, without being able to verify,
reports of large numbers of casualties along with unknown numbers of
persons who have died from secondary effects of violence after having
fled their homes due to exposure to the elements, lack of water, food,
medicines and health care. For these reasons, the figures reported have
to be considered as the absolute minimum.

Hillary has no answers for that either.

The bombings never end -- including in northern Iraq which faces continuous bombings from
Turkish war planes. Despite objections from the Iraqi government, the
US government has elected to support the bombings carried out by the
Turkish government.

ALSUMARIA reports
that today those bombings are targeting religious shrines in Dohuk
Province. The shrine of Sheikh Ali al-Islam was one destroyed in today's
bombings and it was over a thousand years old.

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi long ago called for these bombings to stop.

And they haven't.

On the topic of bombings, Sunday and Monday saw the Islamic State carry out massive bombings which resulted in the deaths of well over one hundred people. Now ALSUMARIA reports Speaker of Parliament Saleem al-Jubouri is calling for a hearing into the failures of the security system. ALL IRAQ NEWS adds he's calling for the security leaders to testify before the Parliament.